


Architect of Action

by mechafly



Category: Mother of Learning
Genre: Alternate Ending, Fluff, M/M, Plot Twists, Slash, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 11:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12863415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechafly/pseuds/mechafly
Summary: Eight thousands words of Zorian and Zach being a fluffy OTP. The end.





	Architect of Action

**Author's Note:**

> Written for pure fun and lolz, after Ch 77. We have yet to be told what colour Zach's (or indeed Zorian's) eyes are, so for now they are now brown.

"Look, what if it doesn't work?" Zorian waited a tense moment to look aver at Zach, but Zach was avoiding his gaze completely and looked out at the vast expanse of the Xlotic desert. They'd been journeying for weeks and were standing on a sizeable cliff edge, where Zorian's soul marker was telling him they'd found the final piece of the Key to exit the time loop. Zorian thought now was a good a time to bring the issue up as any.

"Don't worry about it," Zach grinned, folding his arms and trying to look all heroic in the stale wind washing over them. Zorian refrained from rolling his eyes, only because they weren't teenagers any more, even if they still looked like it.

"After all these years, you still think I'm ever going to just not worry about it?" Zorian ran a hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. They'd been travelling through the unpleasant conditions of the desert the old-fashioned way and the heat was certainly getting to him, but the pressure of knowing that their quest was coming to an end and might not work was weighing on him the most. "Not everything can just be solved through brute force optimism and--" Zach forestalled Zorian's next words by leaping off the cliff edge with a whooping cry.

"You did say it was down here, didn't you?" Zach yelled as he fell, still grinning comically, his voice gradually fading away as he fell out of view.

Zorian knew for a fact that Zach had done that on purpose to avoid getting chewed out by one of Zorian's rants. "Use your ability to float, goddamit!" He prepared his own spell, which would allow him to descend down the cliff in a far more controlled manner. "Goddamn thrillseeker."

 

 

—

 

 

Zorian and Zach had been in the time loop together for years at this point. It had been a long time since they had finally decided to trust each other, too, and therefore certain things were taken for granted. Zach didn't use the mind blank spell if it was just him and Zorian, which allowed Zorian to read the surface emotions that seemed to ping off Zach like radio waves. Usually this was just endless, irritating (and sometimes, though he'd hardly admit it to Zach, reassuring) waves of positivity, cheerfulness, optimism and strength, but Zorian could sense a faint wave of something like apprehension from Zach as he came to a landing beside him.

The sand was burning hot under their feet. Zorian cast a slight cooling spell, since Zach had obviously not bothered due to being a macho combat mage or something like that. Zach was looking over at a glittering array of rocks across the cliff face. He pointed. "Is that it?"

Zorian decided not to say anything about the apprehension he'd sensed from Zach. "That looks like it."

They'd had an unspoken agreement to do this last quest alone. No Daimen, no Xvim or Alanic or Silverlake, not even any simulacrums unless Zorian felt they were required, and they shouldn't be. It was a simple pick up in the middle of the endless desert, after all, an area so barren and unsupportive of life that even monsters and primordials didn't hang out for too long. They'd felt they were coming to the end of something important, and it only seemed appropriate that it was the two of them at the end of it all. The final, long journey across the continent had felt significant, somehow, but now in the desert - the desert, where the air was thick and oppressive and dusty, and the sunlight reflected off the glassy surface of the sand and burned you in both directions - Zorian was heartily sick of travelling and couldn't wait to get away.

It was as simple as walking up to the final part of the Key, which was the ring of the First Emperor of Ikosia. It wasn’t an item of jewellery like Zorian had been expecting, and was instead a large golden hoop half-buried in a fossilised set of crystals and limestone. Zorian squatted down to get a look at it and cast some divinations. "That's it. My soul marker confirms it."

"Huh, well. That was way too easy, what a shame. What do you think it does?“ Zach stretched his arms out over his head. He looked fresh and ready and dressed for battle in his light leather combat gear, the undershirt removed due to the oppressive heat leaving his tan bare arms free, and his black hair gleamed in the desert sun. Zorian had left his shirt on, because he had no need to make himself look cool and heroic like Zach did, and because he could easily cast the appropriate temperature modifiers if he was uncomfortable in his travel gear. True, Zorian could admit that was mildly envious of the fact that Zach had started out with a better fighting physique in the time loop compared to his own weedy frame, but he supposed that if the time loop really was going to end now that they'd found the final Key, he could now actually get to work on changing that. None if it seemed quite real yet. Zorian shook his head and stood up.

"Let's go." Having determined that the ring was free of all possible entrapments, Zorian pulled it free of its fossilised encasing. The ring immediately glowed bright red. "Oh shi—"

 

 

—

 

 

Zorian's eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

"Good morning, brother!" an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. "Morning, morning, MORN--AAAAAAAH!"

"Hey," Zorian sighed, waving lazily at a frantic Zach who'd just teleported into his bedroom in Cirin. Kirielle tumbled backwards and fell off the bed with a thump. "Kiri, are you alright?"

"What the hell happened?" Zach reached forward and shook Zorian by the collar of his pyjamas. Zorian noticed in amusement that Zach had actually teleported into his room in his sleepwear too, and that the sleepwear was printed with tiny little blue bunnies.

"Help! Who are you?" Kirielle screamed at the exact same time.

"Bunnies, huh?" Zorian sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted. They were going to have to do the whole long trip to the Xlotic desert again, and this time ward the ring, levitate the ring out the whole journey back, heck, even wear gloves to pick up the ring, whatever it took. The entire area of the desert was barred against dimension gates due to some kind of mass primordial frenzy in the area that had twisted the dimension plane completely out of alignment with the rest of the continent. Xvim had warned him that if they tried to open a linear dimension gate to that part of the Xlotic desert, they were liable to end up opening a hole in the actual shell surrounding the time loop and blowing everyone to hell. Zorian was half-tempted to try anyway. He really didn't like sand.

"Don't judge me," Zach sniffed, standing up straight. Due to their many years together, they'd developed a near-telepathic sense of what the other would be likely to think at any given moment and the ability to skim each other’s thoughts. Zach had become remarkably proficient at anticipating Zorian's sometimes roundabout solutions to difficult problems, and Zorian, well, he knew that wherever there was danger, Zach was likely to be pointed in that direction.

"I guess you learn something new about someone even after spending years in their company," Zorian teased, eyeing the bunny pyjamas up and down. They were oddly… fitting. It was rare enough to find anything even slightly new or embarrassing about Zach that he just couldn't let it go that easily.

Kirielle was still staring open-mouthed at the two of them, one of her pigtails totally askew, as if they were absolutely crazy. Which, by possibly quite a lot of standards, they were.

"Let's get out of here," Zorian said, grabbing Zach's arm and preparing to teleport them to one of their many safehouses.

"Wait, wait." Zach looked contemplative. "Do you want to, you know... Go to class? For old time's sake?"

Zorian frowned at him. If it wasn't for the fact that he could sense Zach's mind like it was his own, he might have started casting a bunch of divinations on Zach right there and then. "And you want to do this for what reason exactly?"

Zach looked at him beseechingly with his big innocent brown eyes all round and.... innocent. Zorian once again refrained from rolling his eyes at the all-too-familiar puppy-dog act. Zorian knew full well that Zach was a godlike combat mage who'd mercilessly destroyed countless monsters and armies, so it wasn't going to work on him. "Don't you want to use this chance, one last time, to see all our classmates in the time loop, before we get ejected back into the real world?"

"Time loop?" Kirielle yelped. They both turned to look at her. She got to her feet, laughed nervously, eyes going back and forth between the two of them, and ran out of the door. It closed with a slam behind her. Zorian could hear her feet thumping noisily down the stairs. Great.

"Zach, that's... such a stupid idea. We've been through that goddamn Academy loop hundreds, if not thousands of times. It was boring even before I developed all of my current abilities, _now_ it'll be... really, really..." Zach was looking sad and disappointed. He sat down on the end of Zorian's bed in his blue bunny pyjamas looking like Zorian had personally told him there were no more monsters left to battle in the entire world. Zorian rubbed his eyes in frustration. "Right. One last time. For old time's sake, huh?"

Zach perked up and gave him a big thumbs up.

 

 

—

 

 

Zorian decided to just tell the family that his 'good friend' Zach Noveda was going to be taking the train with him to Cyoria, and wasn't it marvellous that he had such an influential friend from a Noble House? His mother didn't even try and get mad at him for the fright he'd given Kirielle after that. Everyone around him was so predictable thanks to the countless restarts he'd been through that they didn't even feel like real people any more. They felt like ghosts or simulacrums that he could see right through. Like paper people.

Zorian was sitting on the train. Zach was rambling on and on about how excited he was to see the girls, to chat with some of the guys. Zorian looked at him contemplatively. It was true, he thought, that he had no interest in what any of their classmates would do in this restart. He already knew every possible thing that could occur. They were all predictable, everyone except Zach. Even though he'd spent so much time with Zach and in Zach's mind, Zach wasn't part of the time loop. Zach was the only one left to Zorian who was still unique.

"Hey soul brother, why the long face?" Zach interrupted his thoughts with his inane grin fixed in place. Zorian tried not to let the grin bother him. They'd been together for so long that Zorian had spent actual serious moments with Zach, enough to know that the grin was just a stupid facade as constructed as Zorian's own mask of irritability.

"Please don't call me that ever again," Zorian griped. Zach immediately decided to pull him in for a one-armed bear hug and Zorian tried, ineffectually, to fight him off without either of them activating any serious powers and blowing up half the train. It was harder than it looked.

Zach was laughing at Zorian's squid-like attempts to break loose. It was good to hear Zach laugh, Zorian thought idly. He wondered what he would have turned out like in the time loop if he hadn't linked up with Zach. The thought of being alone, paranoid and misanthropic in a world where nobody understood or remembered him made him feel cold. At first he'd have had people like Kirielle and Taiven to care for, but eventually he would have turned out crazy and bitter as the endless repeats drove him out of his mind. "That's what we are," Zach was laughing. "Don't you like being soul bonded to me? It’s kind of mysterious and cool.“

"It's not a question of liking it, if I'm stuck with it with no choice in the matter," Zorian protested. He managed to pry one of Zach's big-knuckled hands off his shoulder, only for the other one to get him from behind.

"I like it," Zach said, holding Zorian still with insulting ease when he really tried to. He decided to look right into Zorian's eyes to say this. Zorian felt his face heating up from how stupidly close Zach had decided to lean forward.

Zorian rolled his eyes this time. He couldn't help it. "If I say that I like being your friend too, and point out that you obviously, ridiculously, decided to go on this 'one final trip to the Academy’ because you're worried about the state of our soul bond when we finally make our attempt to exit the time loop before it disintegrates, and your solution was therefore to delay the inevitable ending, will you let me free before someone enters this carriage and gets the wrong idea?"

Zach let him go. “Hey, I’m not worried. Our soul bond is strong."

Zorian looked cautiously over at him. He didn't want to say what he was about to say, but it had to be done. "You know that there's a fair chance that I'll die, right? Since I'm not the original Controller like we hypothesise you are, and since the Guardian of the Gate has made it very clear that it is completely against killing the original Zorian in order to replace him with me?" Zach looked at him, stricken. "And since, you know, 'only one can leave', and all that jazz?" Zorian added, as if they hadn't been over that a thousand times already.

"I won't let you die!” Zach proclaimed dramatically.

"I don't think you can stop it." Zorian folded his arms. "I suppose I allowed this final sidetrip to Cyoria so I could make sure you were aware of this too. So we could discuss it properly before going through with it. I know the plan to escape is all laid out and ready to go but I don't think we've discussed all the possible results, including the bad ones.”

Zach groaned in frustration. "We don't need to have a great big discussion of all the possibilities because there's only one acceptable outcome, that we both get out with our minds and souls intact, and Red Robe _eats dirt_.”

Zorian actually had to grin. "You know, sometimes I wish I lived in that simple, black-and-white world that you do. It would be... refreshing."

Zach looked put out. "I couldn't live in your head, so many freaking contingencies, possibilities, plots, subplots. It would be exhausting." Zorian gave him a thumbs up, mimicking Zach's own annoying pose. "You're exhausting. But I'm grateful you're here. I would never have figured out half this shit on my own."

Zorian shrugged, losing the humour of the moment. "That's what I'm here for, I guess."

Zach seized his shoulders. "But I really believe that! I believe that you were meant to be here, with me! I think our soul bond means something too, that we're meant to escape _together_."

Zorian looked Zach right in the eye. "We both need to be prepared for the possibility that we die when we try and exit the time loop. We might both die, but it's more likely one or the other of us will get out and find the other one back to his pre-time loop original self, if not outright dead." Zach looked away. "Are you prepared for that? You won't go, like, batshit insane if you come find me and I'm just plain old original Zorian?”

"I'd feel like I killed my best friend," Zach said morosely, after a moment's silence. "You're — we've spent years alone with each other. Sometimes I feel like I know you as well as I know myself. We have a freaking soul bond, goddammit. I'd — I'd be devastated." He sighed and shook his head. "Look, I'm just going to come and give you another hug to dispel these terribly sad thoughts from my mind. Don't freak out."

Zorian allowed Zach to give him a kind of manly one-hard bro hug, feeling a bit guilty at the waves of depression and grief emanating from Zach's mind. "I never freak out."

"That is totally untrue."

"I'm the calm, sane one in this partnership, Zach. _You_ are the one who rushes into things without any kind of thought.“

"You're the crazy one who freaks out over all kinds of things that haven't even happened yet, you mean, _Zorian_."

"Yeah, well..." Zorian trailed off, since he couldn't exactly dispute this with the worries currently weighing on his mind. "Look, let me say something. I'd be even more devastated than you if, from beyond the grave, I knew that my untimely death triggered you to turn into some kind of crazed arch villain. You do have an unholy amount of power, after all. It could go really damn wrong if you went evil. It’s been known to happen. I have to worry about these things."

"You won’t die!” Zach exclaimed. "If you did die, I'd go into the afterlife and come find you, and then you wouldn’t be dead anymore!“

"Please don't do that," Zorian lifted a hand. "Even if it would be fascinating, you'd probably end up destroying the entire world as we know it or something, and I'm going to state categorically, for the record, that that's just not worth it for one life, even mine. And I'm the one living my life!"

"You always think of the craziest possibilities. You're not going anywhere, Zorian. Unless you know something that I don't." He looked at Zorian. Zorian looked out of the window. Zorian wordlessly sent Zach a negative, but Zach didn't let his grip on Zorian go. The train trundled on, and even though he knew from previous restarts that passengers were supposed to be getting on and off, for the rest of their journey they had the carriage to themselves.

 

 

—

 

 

"Aren't you sick of me by now?" Zorian was unpacking his stuff from his room in Cyoria, which Zach had promptly decided he wanted to _share_ with him.

"Nope," Zach said cheerfully. "Of course, maybe I've got a sinister reason for keeping so close to you at all times... Maybe you haven't been paranoid enough where I'm concerned..."

Zorian turned around from where he'd been folding his shirts into a drawer and stared at Zach. Zach was stuffing all his clothes, underwear and socks included, at random into the giant wooden wardrobe at the other end of the room. He gave Zorian a thumbs up and an enthusiastic smile. Zorian’s eyes widened but he could detect nothing but prankster amusement from Zach's mind, and anyway, he knew by now to recognise when Zach was just teasing him for being massively paranoid. He knew that Zach actually appreciated all the tight scrapes they'd only gotten out of over the years because of that same paranoia. The situation with the ring had been a sad aberration, Zorian felt, so he was being extra-paranoid in this restart as a precaution.

The room was laid out with two beds on either side. It was spacious and comfortable, much nicer than the dorms where Zorian usually stayed, but that was the Noveda string-pulling at play. Zach usually stayed in either this room or a bigger but further away room for Nobles in the other part of town, if he was feeling extra fancy.

Zorian couldn't help but look at the layout out of the room, the luxury of the massive beds, and wonder... "Have you ever brought girls back here?"

Zach yelped in laughter. "Do you really want to know?"

Zorian shrugged and then grimaced. "Actually, I can probably guess, and the answer is no, I don't want to know."

Zach threw a pair of boxer shorts at Zorian's head with unerring accuracy. Luckily, after this many years of combat training, Zorian's reflexes were fast enough to both dodge and send them back at Zach's head with the same accuracy. Zach's own black boxer shorts fell around his face and he whipped them off. "Look, dude, I truthfully haven't. I like hanging out with girls or whatever, but as for the rest of it? In the time loop? I just feel like... they’re my fifteen-year-old classmates who have no memories of anything I do and… it would be weird." He shuddered dramatically.

Zorian tended to agree with that assessment, and he was quietly pleased that Zach thought so too. He went back to folding his clothes, noting only in passing that Zach was still looking his way and projecting some kind of mixed emotion that could be summarised as amusement combined with extreme affection and a tinge of worry. He put it out of his mind.

 

 

—

 

 

"You're turning the- the beer into- into something else? What the hell?” Zach was squinting at the pint glass as Zorian held his hand over it. Zorian was kind of impressed that Zach's less-than-perfect divination skills had become good enough to figure out with Zorian was wordlessly doing. "Wha- Wha- Whaaat exactly are you doing?" Zach was only three beers down and his words were noticeably slurring, but Zorian supposed that for all his insane magical prowess he still had the physical body of a fifteen-year-old.

"You're correct. I'm turning the ethanol content of the beer into sugar." Zorian picked up the pint glass and had a sip of it, smirking at Zach.

"I can't believe you're been doing that for years, and I never cottoned on," Zach protested weakly. "I thought you were using your mind magic to keep the alcohol from affecting your mind so much!"

Zorian merely shrugged. “A plausible theory, but incorrect."

"You scoundrel," Zach chuckled good-naturedly, necking his beer and standing up with a noticeable amount of swaying. He pointed to the ceiling. "To the next inn!" Zorian just about managed to intervene to stop him from teleporting while under the influence. He even managed to turn 'the next inn' to 'home', cautioning Zach at length about the dangers of a super-powered arch mage getting so tipsy that any of his senses were noticeably affected.

"Eh, I'm not worried about it. You can totally take care of any enemies for me at this point," Zach mumbled, leaning heavily on Zorian as they swayed their way up the spiral stone steps of the dorm building to get to their bedroom door.

Zorian considered for a moment. "Yes, but I might not always be here," he said eventually.

Zach huffed noisily as Zorian opened the door and they stepped inside. "You're such a killjoy, Zorian." Zorian shrugged in silence sat on the end of his bed. Zach went over and sat down beside him, obviously not willing to let it go. "I hope you know that. I hope you know that you're an absolute killjoy."

"If you say so," Zorian humouring him. Zach was emanating large amounts of affection and amusement at him, so it wasn't like the barb was exactly pointed. They stared at each other for a beat, Zorian with his usual serious expression as he contemplated all the problems they were going to face, and Zach looking drunkenly happy with himself, with a small smile playing around his lips.

"Did I ever tell you that I kissed you in one of my restarts?"

Zorian recoiled with such force that he knocked Zach over. "What?"

Zach landed back on the bed with a bump and grinned at him. "Yeah! I tried it on with everyone. First the girls, but then as the years dragged by, I thought, why not the boys too? The good-looking ones anyway. It took ages for you to agree to be friendly with me! Then, we went out on a date, and when I kissed you, you totally flipped out on me!"

Zorian frowned at him. "Are you messing with me?" Zach was emanating pure truthfulness. "Is that why you were so upset with me? I mean," Zorian flapped his hands, realising he was explaining himself badly. "When I first entered the time loop, I was still pretending not to be a looper but you were surprised that I was so friendly with you, and you implied that I'd blown up at you pretty badly in the past."

"Yeah, you freaked out kind of a lot in your charming Zorian-like way," Zach said cheerfully. "But it was because I didn't realise it was your first kiss!"

Zorian looked at him murderously before clamping his hands to his face and groaning. "You're the worst, seriously. And you've also secretly been in the closet this whole time and I never figured it out."

"Hey, no closet. I’m just... you know... a free and easy... time travelling... super… guy," Zach said, his words trailing off as he inched closer to Zorian. Zorian looked back at him with one eyebrow raised.

"Are you... trying to kiss me?"

"Yes?" Zach said hopefully, his face a couple of inches from Zorian's, his lips unfurling into a wide grin. Not the fake one he put on around other people, but the genuine, warm, kind one that he had around real friends. Not that Zach had many real friends in the time loop. Just Zorian.

Zorian inched back slightly. "Why?"

"Why not?"

"That's not enough of a reason."

"Isn't it?"

"Oh for—" Zorian was about to roll his eyes and really start pulling apart the weakness of Zach's non-arguments when Zach kissed him. He was sort of smiling into the kiss, which was strange, and kind of cool when Zorian thought about it. Zach pulled away. He was broadcasting high levels of affection, Zorian noticed, and he was feeling very pleased with himself, the joker. "You have beer breath."

"I can spell away beer breath," Zach murmured, leaning in and kissing Zorian again, then pulling away, as if he was taking care to make sure Zorian didn't flip out at him again. "Or I could... brush my teeth." The truth was, it would take a lot for Zorian to flip out at Zach after all the insane and intense history they now had together, all the times they'd fought together and died (sometimes messily, sometimes painfully) together. One measly kiss wasn't going to do it, and Zorian was convinced that Zach _knew_ it and was taking full advantage.

Zach let his hand hover by the side of Zorian's face and, when Zorian didn't immediately bat it away (or jump out of the window screaming), let it rest against Zorian's cheek. It felt kind of pleasant, kind of familiar, in a ‘the hand of another guy who was technically an archmage soulbonded to him and with whom he'd spent nearly a decade with in isolation as the world remade itself over and over' kind of way.

It was possible Zorian was overthinking things.

"You're overthinking it again," Zach whispered with another (stupid) grin, leaning in for another kiss. The kissing was nice, too, kind of, Zorian supposed, having no other instances of kissing to compare it too. Zach was kind of putting his mouth on Zorian's and then pressing, and Zorian was pressing back instinctively, and occasionally tongues and teeth were getting caught up in it all and it was kind of awkward except not because of the aforementioned 'stuck in a time loop equalling extreme familiarity' thing. Zach huffed a laugh at him as if he was reading Zorian's thoughts, but he was probably just deducing it all from the depth of Zorian's frown. "I like you. A lot."

"I know," Zorian frowned.

"A lot, a lot," Zach insisted. "You... know?"

Zorian realised, slowly, belatedly, that the extreme affection he was currently reading from the surface of Zach's thoughts - the same emotion he'd been reading off Zach for _years_ \- was a little bit more than... affection.

"Oh," Zorian said pointlessly. "Um."

"Yeah," Zach smiled his stupid, great, yet annoying smile. "Did you really not know?"

Zorian lifted his hands to gesture wildly and dropped them again, defeated. "No, I did not know. Because being an empath does not make me all touchy-feely and in touch with emotions, apparently.”

Zach pulled Zorian into a big hug and they both fell over onto their sides until they were a messy heap on the bed. He was laughing again. "How could I not feel this way about you after all the time we've spent together, I mean, seriously. What about all those times we had to share a bed?"

Zorian lifted his head to glare at Zach. He had to admit lying in a big tangle with Zach was warm and the physical contact was comforting and all of that was pleasant, but he still wasn't going to let Zach get away with being an annoying idiot. "What about those times? I thought those were just platonic bed-sharing incidents between friends that took place out of _necessity_. Are you telling me they weren't?"

"I..." Zach had the grace to look a little sheepish. "They were. Sometimes. I definitely never bribed any innkeepers into saying they only had one room left. I mean, sometimes it was totally necessary, for tactical reasons, that we stay in the same room and even the same bed. Totally. Hey, come on, you cuddled up to me sometimes too!"

"If you're referring to that time we had to go to the ice caps to speak to that primordial living in a glacier, that's because the ambient mana there was so weak that our atmospheric spells didn't work at night and we needed to share the body heat!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever Zorian," Zach teased. "You liked it too. You're just so, you know, _Zorian_ about these things. I never would have got you to kiss me back if we weren't potentially at death’s door and you weren't feeling guilty for holding your potential death over me, not to mention the fear and vulnerability we both inevitably feel at the thought that we might _actually_ die having spent years being completely invulnerable to death."

Zorian grumbled but before he could reply, Zach leaned over him and kissed him again. It was a another grin-kiss. Zorian could kind of have got used to those, and the way they made him feel lighter somewhere in the region of his soul marker, if he weren't potentially dying tomorrow and therefore not getting used to anything at all. Zach caught the edge of his thought and, in an inspired attempt at distraction, ran a hand through Zorian's hair. That felt good, too. Zach had big capable hands, and they felt good stroking through Zorian's hair. He felt quietly content. He felt like a puppy having its coat stroked. Zorian’s eyes flew open from where they’d been falling shut. What the hell were these thoughts? Had his spells on the beer earlier somehow failed, was he drunk after all? Had an enemy mage come and cast a personality-switching spell on him?

Beside him Zach was already drifting off, his other hand clasped tightly around Zorian’s own. Zorian watched his chest rise and fall for a bit, lost in his own thoughts and worries, before pulling off his glasses and putting them by his pillow, and finally allowing himself to drift off as well.

 

—

 

Zorian woke up well before dawn with the warm weight of Zach glued to his side with his leg curled up around Zorian’s.

He could safely say this was the most intimate he’d ever been with another person, though he supposed that had been true for many years now, and perhaps from the moment they’d had their souls bonded together in such a bizarre fashion. He’d never expected to be thinking all of this with regards to another _guy_ though, but since it was Zach of all people, it just didn’t seem that weird. Zach knew everything about Zorian, the good (Zorian considered himself pretty good at tactics and planning, which Zach readily agreed he was hopeless at) and the bad (Zorian could admit that he could be a bit… irritable). Zach knew it all, and had spent years in confinement with Zorian to boot. He knew what Zorian smelled like when they were on the road and they hadn’t showered for weeks, and he’d even been there that time Zorian was nearly chewed to death by the legendary three-headed Feline of Purvah and had cried like a baby from the pain. Zach knew it all and endured him anyway. And Zorian felt the same way about Zach (he could admit as much to himself in the privacy of his own mind). That was what made all of this normal, in a way. It would be way weirder to be lying in bed cuddling someone like Taiven, knowing she’d remember nothing of it in a month’s time. He shuddered.

He peered over at Zach. Zach was sleeping with his mouth open and drooling, with his thick black hair strewn all over the pillow and his handsome features slack in sleep. Zorian signed in annoyance at himself as he thought about the fact that he could have done worse, he supposed.

What if he’d been stuck in a time loop with, say, _Benisek?_

He shuddered again and extracted himself from Zach’s limbs to go for a shower.

When he came out, wearing boxers and towelling his hair, Zach was barely awake, blinking sleepily and looking (Zorian admitted this carefully to himself, with his mind fully guarded) adorably confused. “I woke up and you were gone.” Zorian didn’t bother to explain where he’d been, hoping it was evident from, well, the evidence. He tossed the wet towel pointedly onto the bed. “It’s so early, dude!” Zorian rummaged around in the closet and pulled out some day clothes. “Hey, I was wondering, do you think you being a mind mage would affect what it’s like to have sex with you?”

Zorian hadn’t thought anyone had it in them to surprise him twice in 24 hours, but Zach was definitely doing his damnedest. He froze in the middle of pulling on a sweater and stared slack-jawed at Zach . “Why… why would you even…”

Zach looked like light was dawning on him and he broke out into a massive grin. “You mean you haven’t even _considered_ it? Do I get a point for thinking of something before you did?”

Zorian sat down on the edge of the bed, a safe distance away from Zach. “What are you even talking about? Why would I—“ He stopped himself and pulled the sweater on. “Why would I even be thinking about dumb stuff like that when I have to think about the dimensional physics of this primordial that we’re apparently stuck inside? Not to even mention factoring in time as a fourth dimension and how that might skew things? We haven’t even considered the implications this has for what we know of the gods and the spiritual dimensions—“

Zach held up his hands. “I get it, I get it, you’re smarter than me! Stop with the long words!”

Zorian shook his head, knowing full well Zach understood every word and more and was a perfectly capable dimensional mage in his own right. “Not answering your question either.”

Zach bounced forward and put his arms around Zorian. Zorian allowed this with great reluctance, and Zach… snuffled him. On the cheek. For lack of a better word to describe what he was doing. Zorian swatted him away; it tickled. “Isn’t it interesting though? Do you think you’d be able to sense what I was feeling if we had sex? Or would you, like, _be in my brain?_ ”

“I’m not sure I want to have this conversation with you while sitting on a bed with you and half-dressed, but I have no desire to have sex with you. Sorry.” Zorian wasn’t going to worry about whether that was strictly true, because it was the principle of the thing that mattered, and the principle was that the whole conversation was _stupid_ when they had _necromancers_ to fight and a _time looping dimension_ to escape from.

Zorian was a very principled guy.

Zach pulled back and winked at him jauntily. “I bet I could interest you…” Zorian huffed but he was expecting it this time when Zach leaned in for a kiss, a slow one this time that he held for an inordinately long period. Zorian actually felt like of dizzy when they broke for air. Zach smiled at him, a secret, cocky smile that Zorian was beginning to label as ‘Zach’s attempted seductive smile’. Zach leaned in until their noses were touching. “I bet you could do some really kinky stuff to me with your mind powers.”

Zorian stood up, hands raised and face redder than he would like to admit. “That’s it. We’re dealing with the goddamn time loop first. If, and I say _if_ , we both survive escaping this thing in our current forms—“ Zach started to chuckle and pounced on Zorian again. Zorian dodged. “ _Then,_ Zach Noveda, I will deign to pay any amount of attention to this ridiculous conversation that you’re attempting to start.”

“In that case...” Zach scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Shall we go and get the ring of the first Emperor and finish this thing?

“Ha!” Zorian pointed accusingly at him. “So you admit you care nothing of our classmates and just wanted to buy yourself some time.”

“To seduce you?” Zach waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Zorian mimed throwing up. It turned out he could really be quite the actor when the occasion presented itself. “Are you sure all those restarts haven’t turned you into a dirty old man? You’re what, ninety years old?”

Zach scowled. “I’m in my forties at _worst_ , Zorian, don’t do this to me dude! I’m still young at heart! And body!”

They made immediately plans to get a head start on their journey to go to the Xlotic desert - _again -_ and finally execute their plan to escape the time loop. It would be a wonder if they survived.

 

—

 

They survived.

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fair: after all the incredibly plans they’d devised to escape the time loop, by simultaneously collecting the pieces of the Key to give to the Guardian of the Sovereign Gate, and summoning the primordial under Cyoria to break apart the dimension they were trapped in to make the boundaries between this dimension and the real one weaker, that Red Robe chose his moment turned up again in the time loop to stop them from escaping.

He stepped forward, and Zorian and Zach immediately erected every shield they knew against him. But Red Robe didn’t take advantage of the surprise to attack just yet. He laughed, murderously, and then he lifted his hood and let it fall behind him. Zorian and Zach both took a step back in shock and betrayal.

Red Robe was an older but still clearly recognisable Zach.

“What the hell?” Zach immediately exclaimed, obviously caught off guard. Zorian was already doing the most complex divinations imaginable to establish that this was, indeed, really Zach and not just an illusion, a simulacrum, or any kind of fake, because this couldn’t possibly be real…

“I don’t care about you knowing now, because you’re about to disappear forever,” said Red Robe Zach, grinning the same smile that Zorian recognised so much, but which looked twisted and evil on Red Robe’s face. “Didn’t you wonder how I even entered the time loop?”

Zach clenched his fists. “I thought you’d invaded somehow! Or that you were a temporary looper! We had so many theories! Zorian, you tell him.”

Zorian was very carefully watching Red Robe Zach as both he and Zach maintained their high-strength shields. “Is that how you were able to get Zach’s trust before memory-wiping him? You just told him the truth: that you were him from the future, and therefore he could trust you.”

Red Robe Zach smirked evilly and Zach growled. “Goddammit. I definitely would have fallen for that. Why the hell are you evil then?”

Zorian nodded. “If you’re really Zach, explain why there are two of you.”

Red Robe Zach paced back and forth. “You want me to explain my entire plot in the hopes of escaping and foiling me, don’t you?” He cackled evilly. It was really quite disturbing to see that coming from someone who looked identical to Zach. “You’re arrogant. You might think you’re strong,” he said, gesturing carelessly at Zach, “and _you’ve_ got some interesting mind mage abilities, but you’re nothing but tiny little bugs compared to me. I’ve been stuck in the time loop for nearly four hundred years, and in that time I’ve grown so powerful that I’ve transcended beyond mere mortality! But when I attempted to exit the time loop with my new-found powers, the Sovereign Gate threw me back. It said I’d become ‘too evil’, in its estimation, that I’d become ‘too power-hungry’ and it pronounced the entire exercise a failure.” Red Robe Zach was becoming increasingly agitated and rubbed his hands together. “ME, a failure? The greatest mage the world has ever seen? It was just envy… pure envy… The Gate tried to destroy me and make a brand new copy to start from, and it thought it succeeded… But I was too powerful for even the Gate to destroy, and I wormed my way back to existence using my unparalleled skills in necromancy. That’s when I knew I had to find you, my younger self, to regain the means of controlling the time loop. I then erased the knowledge from your mind, knowing you’d be trapped here forever. I had my fun here, watching you try and fail against the very invasion that _you yourself_ had unwittingly set up, in practice for the real destruction of Cyoria!”

“Why?” Zach yelled.

Red Robe Zach paused. “Why what? Be more specific. I’ve just given you a whole bunch of information.”

Zach bared his teeth. “Why did you start the invasion? Why the hell are you evil, if you’re really me?”

Red Robe Zach smirked. “I started the invasion because I _hate_ Cyoria. I hate this entire kingdom for what they did to my family inheritance and what truly belongs to me! Every single one of them stood by and let it happen, while those fools at the Academy estimated that I was a failure of a mage who would never stand up to them! But how the tables have turned, against the Crown and the Academy both! They’re all weaklings to me now!” Red Robe Zach screamed. “I’m stronger than the gods themselves - I deserve to rule over this kingdom, not Eldemar’s pathetic royalty!”

Zorian shook his head. “So you went a bit too far gathering power, went morally bankrupt and power-mad, let your bitterness against Cyoria turn you into full-on evil and here you are. It’s kind of sad actually.”

Zach sighed. “Agreed. And to think, there’s a chance I would have been the same in so many centuries’ time, if I didn’t have friends around me to make me not go crazy!”

Red Robe Zach growled at the two of them, pointing a finger at Zorian. “I can see that those sad little aranea lied and that you’re the only extra time traveller in this entire time loop. Pathetic, really. Easy enough to kill you both, then,” he grinned manically, raising his hands to cast some sort of divine incantation.

“NOW!” Zorian threw down several marbles that skittered between them and abruptly turned into an army of trolls, war golems, simulacrums of himself and magical monsters, and all of them edging in on Red Robe Zach.

The evil, older Zach laughed as he cut through swathes of the army in an instant, cackling as he overcame hydras, salamanders, and bears on one side and goblins, wraiths and grey jumpers on the other. But then one easily missable monster crawled its way closer to him - a beautiful white flower, warded and shielded with the ultimate protection, with a head like a cloud of petals and leaves and a stalk of mundane green, inching its way closer on its upturned roots - the soulseizer chrysanthemum.

Zach and Zorian stuck around just long enough to watch Red Robe Zach shout, “What kind of mage uses a _flower_ to fight?!” before they joined their hands together and chanting one final extreme soul bonding spell, taught to them by Alanic, that should allow them to exit the time loop together.

 

-

 

 

Zorian woke up in his own bed, with Kirielle’s customary greeting. He immediately got out of bed and tried to divine where Zach was. He hoped the plan had worked. It had been simple enough really - for the soulseizer to devour the Red Robe’s soul and for himself and Zach to merge into one soul temporarily, in order to escape the time looping dimension via the Soveign Gate.

But Zach was nowhere to be found in the whole city. Zorian could only hope that didn’t mean the worst…

Zorian had set up several contingencies in his mind to go through when they were out of the time loop, things to check to make sure he still had the full use of the memories and powers he’d gained in the time loop. He wanted to check, ultimately, whether it was really him or whether he’d been destroyed for the sake of the original Zorian.

From what he could tell, everything was intact. His mind magic, his skills and knowledge, the alliances he’d forged, the friendships he’d made. _Zach_. He remembered all of it.

But where was Zach?

Pushing away the concerns of his family, Zorian teleported to Zach’s customary residence, but there was nothing there. Hesitating, unsure whether to really believe what his divinations were telling him, Zorian went through the motions of the customary restart, except that this time it was, presumably, lasting and final. He failed to put any effort into them though, not caring that the effects would be permanent. He was still looking for Zach.

When Zorian tried to sense the markers on his soul, he couldn’t find anything there, though he hypothesised that perhaps his soul sight hadn’t made it out of the time loop with him. He couldn’t sense any more the patch of his soul that had originally been Zach’s. It had completely blended into his own.

Sitting through his initial meeting with Ilsa, sitting on the train to Cyoria, he thought about how the battle had ended. What of the fact that Red Robe had turned out to have been an older version of Zach? They hadn’t anticipated that at all. That made Red Robe the original Zach, which made the Zach that Zorian knew a copy. What if the Gate had stuck to its stated policy of deleting all copies?

But Zorian was alive, and that didn’t fit… unless Zach had been given some kind of option… some kind of choice… as the holder of the original controller maker on his soul… what if their bonding spell, a spell they had only ever had one shot at, had failed… and the Gate had seen two souls after all rather than one, and asked Zach as the holder of the marker to clarify which of the two entities it was seeing was the real Controller, whose fully trained soul should survive outside the loop, and which was merely a copy to be discarded? And what if Zach had made a choice? The _wrong_ choice? The stupid, selfless, _heroic_ choice?

Zorian knew he was an over-thinker but these thoughts were completely overwhelming, and horrible. He wasn’t exactly a romantic guy, but wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a world where Zach had nominated himself to be deleted. He didn’t think he could stand to meet a Zach that was the original Zach, someone so far in the distant past that Zorian didn’t even remember what he was like at all. Zorian spent a long time staring dully across from him, thinking of all the times he’d unnecessarily teased Zach for being annoying, or kind of immature, or thoughtless, or way too full on, and wishing he could take them all back.

At the very least Zorian could have been less of a coward and admitted to Zach’s face how he really felt for him…

People were getting on and off the train, and one of them was Ibery who always got on at this stop and looked at him with recognition, but he couldn’t look at anyone anymore. He was sweating and trembling, and when the stop for Cyoria came, he got off and looked around guiltily, contemplating turning around and leaving.

That’s when he saw Zach.

He was standing at the other end of the platform and waving. Waving. _At Zorian._

Zorian knew in his heart that it was just the original Zach, being as friendly as ever, but he still had to go over and make sure. Zach’s smile seemed warm… and familiar.

“Hey,” Zach said when Zorian stood tensely in front of him, not saying anything.

“Hey,” Zorian responded, fists clenched, unable to ask any of the questions buzzing around in his mind because he thought the confirmation of the worst, delivered in this cruel fashion, might actually drive him to a life of unparalleled evil. He spared a moment’s sympathy for Red Robe Zach.

“So, that time loop, eh?” Zach laughed, stretched his hands above his head.

“You—“ Zorian’s fists trembled. “You dick! Is it really you?” Then he caught himself. He was being completely illogical about this. “What is the name of a flower that lives in the very north plains of Altazia and is highly dangerous?”

“Well, duh, the soulseizer chrysanth— It’s good to see you too,” Zach laughed and hugged Zorian back.

“I thought you were dead,” Zorian muttered. “Why the hell can’t I sense you?”

“I, er,” Zach started. “When we completed the super ultra soul bond and tried to leave, I ran into a bit of trouble with Red Robe version of me. It turned out that because his soul is technically mine, he got pulled into the incantation before that crazy badass flower was finished devouring him, so then he started to pull _me_ out of the soul bond. Meanwhile, you got out of the time loop, and we floated in our own newly created soul orb separate in time… We were trapped in an interlocking war of souls for, oh, a couple of centuries at least?”

“What.” Zorian gaped at him.

“But I won! And so, I belatedly made it into the real world about five minutes ago, minus most of the powers that I had in the time loop, buuuut I think I have my memories intact so I guess it’s just a case of practice now? And I’m kind of exhausted at the soul level from my centuries of battle? Zorian?”

“Let’s, just,” Zorian muttered, still not letting go of Zach. “I’m going to come up with a brilliant plan to get you all your ungodly powers back in the speediest possibly manner, and in the meantime, the only plan I can think of is… Let’s go to school. For the last time. Hopefully.”

Zach grinned sunnily at him. “Sounds like a great idea.”

 

 

 

END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Epilogue:

 

They were seated on the floor as Zorian used his abilities to apply intricate divinations to Zach’s very mind and soul. The goal was to determine whether Zach was completely unharmed, the extent to which his abilities and memories had been affected, as well as any lingering effects of their attempted soul merge and the ensuing battle Zach had endured. Xvim was watching over their attempts to make sure nothing unexpected occurred, but had been mollified by Zorian’s insistence that he was literally the only mage in the world with the knowledge and experience to do these kind of diagnostics on his fellow time traveller. Zach sat patiently with his legs crossed, letting the waves of soul sight and psychic intent roll through him.

“So, Zorian, about that conversation you said we could resume if we both made it out of the time loop—“

“NOT RIGHT NOW, YOU IDIOT!”


End file.
